Metropolitan Police apology to civil rights campaigner Stafford Scott

Civil rights campaigner Stafford Scott has extracted a fulsome apology from the Metropolitan Police for his arrest, subsequent detention and treatment by officers in the course of events in November 2014.

The apology came in the context of an out-of-court settlement less than three weeks before the scheduled trial of Mr Scott’s civil claim against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner in respect of the relevant events.

In his claim for damages for assault and battery, false imprisonment, and breaches of the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998, it was Mr Scott’s case that the officers involved were discourteous and unnecessarily aggressive towards him; that their conduct in restraining, arresting and detaining him was influenced by their perception of him as a black man; and that his arrest and detention could have been avoided had matters been dealt with differently.